Chapter 54. Tcl/Tk 8.3

This chapter provides a look ahead at the next Tcl release.

Tcl 8.3 is already in the planning stages as this book goes to press. The overall theme of 8.3 is to continue the incorporation of contributed patches, especially for Tk. Jan Nijtmans' dash and image patches have many handy features such as dashed lines on the canvas, improved image support, and more. These additions will be added in a compatible way. In many cases, a patch only makes small changes to the Tcl or Tk core library that enables a more sophisticated extension to loaded without changing the core. The long term goal for Tcl/Tk is that interesting additions can be made as extensions that do not require changes to the Tcl core. Many extensions are available today: You can find them on the Web at:

However, some changes require changes to Tcl/Tk itself. If you are interested in contributing to the continued improvement of Tcl/Tk, you can help. Contributions should be made via the Scriptics' Web site at:

All bug reports and patch submissions are logged in a database. Source code patches that are made according to the Tcl Engineering Manual guidelines, which include documentation and test cases, have the most chance of adoption.These guidelines describe code appearance (e.g., indentation), test suite requirements, and documentation requirements.

Note:
the changes proposed in this chapter are no guarantee that these features will actually appear in Tcl/Tk 8.3! These features are on the short list proposed by Jeff Hobbs, but the final contents of 8.3 will be a trade-off between features, effort, and schedule.